Day 3
It was predicted to be rainy/foggy for the earlier part of the day, and sure it was ! After a heavy breakfast at the Grant Village Lakeside Cafeteria, (the restaurant has a very good location-of course on the lake, by the way) we then went to West Thumb Geyser Basin. The amazing thing about this geyser basin is that it is right on the shore of the placid Yellowstone Lake and a few of the geysers are inside the waters of the lake. West Thumb basin has 2 loops - outer and inner with the outer loop having more hydrothermal features. All these features pour in thousands of gallons of water in the lake. I liked the Fishing Cone Geyser and the SeismoGraph & Bluebell Pools the best here. As we saw in the video program next day, it seems in the earlier days (like in the 1900s), visitors would fish standing atop this cone and then drop their fish inside the steaming cone for it to cook. :)
The drive from West Thumb to our next stop "Mud Volcano/Sulphur Caldron" is very scenic as it runs along the Yellowstone Lake. The lake is the largest lake at high elevation in North America. It is so huge that it can form its own weather patterns aside from the entire rest of the park. The lake meets or rather drains itself at the Yellowstone River which is the scenic spot of Fishing Bridge. Across the parking lot from Fishing Bridge, there's a small knoll with dirt kind of some-what steep steps to climb up to the top. We enjoyed breath-taking views of the lake merging with the river.
Mud Volcano and Sulfur Caldron areas are in the most actively acidic part of Yellowstone caldera. Here the boiling water is so acidic that it dissolves the rock around it churning it into boiling mud. Here all you smell is the strong hydrogen sulfide odor that's emitted from the ground. Check out a video here to see how it looks like. Other good features here are Black Dragon's Caldron and the Dragon's Mouth thermal spring which roars vigorously sounding like a Dragon's mouth as the water boils. Just north of this area the roads and woods open up to a beautiful Hayden Valley. We spotted a bison up close there.
We finally reached the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone area. We first went to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. The Artist's point at the end of the road over the Chittenden Bridge,is indeed a picture-perfect inspiration for artists- it is an awesome view of the Lower Falls of YellowStone River. After a couple of photo shoots, we then headed to Uncle Tom's Trail. This is steep but well-guarded 328-step trail down to the bottom of the Falls. A heavenly experience down there! Just on the other side was a view-point for Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River. The upper falls is shorter in height than the lower falls. We then went to see the brink of the Upper Falls along the Northern Rim area. Unfortunately, the rest of the Northern Rim was closed for the season due to landslides. So a quick late lunch and some wandering around, this was the end of our Grand Canyon Area of Yellowstone. But we were proved wrong the next day by some visitors. They were touting a lot about the Visitor Center of Grand Canyon area, which we eventually saw on the final day of our trip. This is a great visitor center-cum-geology/historical museum with animated exhibits.
Since we had saved time on account of the closed North Rim, the proposition was to head north and either do a good hike up Mount Washburn or go straight ahead crossing the Dunraven Pass to Lamar Valley. But then Mount Washburn trail requires atleast 4-5 hours round trip and it was beginning to get very cold and windy in the evening. We could see signs of the impending snowfall prediction for later that night. So we dropped Mount Washburn plan and decided to go to Lamar Valley instead. Enroute was a quick stop at Tower Falls.
Lamar Valley is said to be best seen during twilight hours- either before sunrise or after sunset. This is the time when the wildlife comes out to graze. We spotted a herd of bison and some antelopes. We went all the way until Pebble Creek campground and then on our way back hiked up to Trout Lake. It is a steep 30-40 min hike at the end of which is this serene Trout Lake. The woods here are dense and you can smell the pine and spruce here. I loved that fragrance.
This was the end of our 3rd Day at Yellowstone. We had a warm dinner at the Roosevelt Restaurant and cuddled warm into our "Rough-Rider" cabins at the Roosevelt Lodge.
About 2 weeks ago, we just returned from our much awaited Yellowstone vacation planned for the last long weekend of the summer, Labor Day Weekend. It was well worth the wait.
Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are situated in north-west Wyoming. With Idaho and Montana bordering Yellowstone National Park, one can enter the park from the west via West Yellowstone, MT or from the north via Gardiner, MT, from the east via Cody,WY or Cooke City, WY and from the south via Jackson. They are a part of the Targhee National Forest area.
Day 1
We flew to Salt Lake City on Aug 29th after work and crashed in a nearby airport hotel for the night.
Day 2
Being 2 hours behind EST, we were up way earlier the next day than we expected to be which turned out to be good. We started driving to West Yellowstone at about 7:30 am, enjoying the hilly terrains and vast vast fields of Utah and Idaho, which we so miss in Florida. The air was crisp at 59 F. We reached West Yellowstone around 12:30-1:00 pm and spent about an hour there walking around the town and having lunch.
At about 2:00 pm we started heading towards the park. The entire park is in the shape of an 8. We had planned our itinerary to cover the 8 in an anti-clock wise direction starting from West-Yellowstone/Madison junction going southward towards Old Faithful area and calling it a day at Grant Village. 
However the drive from Madison Junction to Old Faithful has a number for detour scenic loops not worth missing and can easily take about 2-3 hours before one can reach the Old Faithful area.The road from West Yellowstone to Madison and further south runs parallel to the Firehole River, a scenic experience. We took our first detour along the Firehole Canyon drive which had breath-taking Firehole Falls as one of its highlights.We then stopped at the Fountain Flats drive before moving on to our first experience of geyser basins at the Fountain Paint Pots trail.
Fountain Paint Pots trail is a kids-friendly trail and covers almost all the 4 hydrothermal features - Hot springs, Steam vents(a.k.a. Fumaroles), Mud Pots and Geysers - that Yellowstone is known for. I vividly remember the Celestine Pool, Bacteria, Fountain Paint Pot (which is a mud pot), Red Spouter and one more geyser along the farther corner of the trail. The temperatures of these hydrothermal features range from 120 - 200 F and they contain lots of acidic chemicals, typically hydrogen sulphides in them. Legend has it (as told by one of the park rangers) that one of the visitors and his dog succumbed to their life as they jumped into the Celestine Pool.
We then went to Firehole Lake drive which has 3 good thermal features - Firehole Spring, Great Fountain Geyser and White Dome geyser. We could see Firehole Spring constantly bubbling, a striking contrast to the cool blue color it possessed. The name Firehole is interesting, a number of natural artifacts are named Firehole in Yellowstone . The park ranger explained that "hole" is the native-Indian-speak for the word "valley". So in effect Firehole means Valley of Fire, which Yellowstone indeed is.
A little further ahead, there was no activity at Great Fountain Geyser which the park rangers had predicted to be erupting later that night between 10:00 pm - 12:00 pm. We were very lucky to arrive just in time for White Dome Geyser to erupt. It was our first ever geyser in the park showing off its scheduled eruption, which was a lot overwhelming for us. White Dome Geyser is a cone geyser.
White Dome Geyser Erupting
After this, we went to the Midway Geyser Basin. Now the entire Old Faithful area comprises of 4 geyser basins - the northernmost being Midway Geyser Basin followed by Biscuit and Black Sand Basins and then of course Old Faithful's Upper Geyser Basin. Midway Geyser Basin is home to the largest hot spring in the park- the Grand Prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser. Excelsior Geyser, now a very large thermal spring, has beautiful intricate siliceous sinter patterns that lined on its inner walls. It is very active and pours a large amount of water in the Firehole river by way of minor streams and falls.
By the time we were done with Midway Geyser Basin, we were extremely thirsty. So we decided to skip Biscuit Basin and Black Sand Basin for the moment and head straight on to Old Faithful area which has many cafeterias - big and small. The visitor center at Old Faithful has a chart of various "predictable" geysers and their next expected eruption times.When we first went in there, one of the park rangers was announcing that Bee-hive geyser would be erupting in the next 15 minutes. So we rushed to the nearest viewing vantage point to see the geyser erupting. It went as high over 100-150 feet. Mind-blowing !!
Old Faithful was going to erupt in the next half hour as per the predictions, so we casually strolled around near the benches waiting to see one of the most touted attractions of the park. We had already spent 45 min waiting for Old Faithful and it was taking longer than that to erupt :(. Finally we decided to move on, but just as we were about to enter the visitor center again, there it was. By this time it was already 6:30 pm. We just had a max of an hour and a half before sun-down to see the rest of this geyser basin. But we had no idea how big it was. The Upper Geyser basin itself can take half-a-day to be covered in its entirety along with an hour of Ranger Program worth taking here.
We did the ranger program next which was very informative. She walked us along the upper bridge/loop area explaining a bit of history, geology, animal life, science and contemporary issues of Yellowstone, particularly wrt to the geysers and thermal springs in the upper loop - the Anemone Geyser that erupts every 15 - 20 min and flushes down its own water like a toilet bowl :), Plume Geyser that luckily erupted while we were around in repeatable 5-7 gushes. The upper loop also contained the Bee-hive geyser- it would have been amazing to be soaked into Bee-hive's erupted water from here, Lion Club geyser, Giantess geyser, Doublet pool and Aurum Geyser. Castle Geyser far across, on the other side of this loop was erupting as she continued her talk. Since Castle Geyser eruption lasts for almost 40-45 min, we hurried to see the last glimpses of its gushes.
This was almost the end of our site-seeing day. It was a long day from 5:30 am up until then. We decided to have dinner at Old Faithful Cafeteria and then head on to our our Grant Village accomodation.
